During the last decades, the methods for intuitive task level programming of robots have become a fundamental point of interest for industrial application. The paper in hand presents SkiROS (Skill-based Robot Operating System) a novel software architecture based on the skills paradigm. The skill paradigm has already been used and tested within the FP7 project TAPAS, and we are going to use it in several new FP7 projects (CARLOS, STAMINA, ACAT). It facilitates task-level programming of mobile manipulators by providing the robot with a set of movement primitives, skills and tasks. This hierarchy brings many advantages, where the most relevant is the separation of control in the layers of hardware abstraction(proxy), multi-sensory control(primitive), object-level abstraction (skill) and planning (task). The deﬁnition and the clear division in different abstraction levels allows the implementation of a ﬂexible, highly modular system for the development of cognitive robot tasks

Andersen, Rasmus Skovgaard

Bøgh, Simon

Chrysostomou, Dimitrios

Damgaard, Jens Skov

Grossmann, Bjarne

Krüger, Volker

Madsen, Ole

Pedersen, Mikkel Rath

Rovida, Francesco

Schou, Casper

During the last decades, the methods for intuitive task level programming of robots have become a fundamental point of interest for industrial application. The paper in hand presents SkiROS (Skill-based Robot Operating System) a novel software architecture based on the skills paradigm. The skill paradigm has already been used and tested within the FP7 project TAPAS, and we are going to use it in several new FP7 projects (CARLOS, STAMINA, ACAT). It facilitates task-level programming of mobile manipulators by providing the robot with a set of movement primitives, skills and tasks. This hierarchy brings many advantages, where the most relevant is the separation of control in the layers of hardware abstraction(proxy), multi-sensory control(primitive), object-level abstraction (skill) and planning (task). The deﬁnition and the clear division in different abstraction levels allows the implementation of a ﬂexible, highly modular system for the development of cognitive robot tasks.<br/

    Aalborg UniversitetSkiROSRovida, Francesco; Schou, Casper; Andersen, Rasmus Skovgaard; Damgaard, Jens Skov;Chrysostomou, Dimitrios-Chrysostomos; Bøgh, Simon; Pedersen, Mikkel Rath; Grossmann,Bjarne; Madsen, Ole; Krüger, VolkerPublication date:2014Document VersionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordLink to publication from Aalborg UniversityCitation for published version (APA):Rovida, F., Schou, C., Andersen, R. S., Damgaard, J. S., Chrysostomou, D., Bøgh, S., ... Krüger, V. (2014).SkiROS: A four tiered architecture for task-level programming of industrial mobile manipulators. Paper presentedat International Workshop on Intelligent Robot Assistants, Padova, Italy.General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.            ? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.            ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain            ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ?Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at vbn@aub.aau.dk providing details, and we will remove access tothe work immediately and investigate your claim.Downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: April 25, 2017SkiROS: A four tiered architecture for task-levelprogramming of industrial mobile manipulatorsFrancesco Rovida1, Casper Schou2, Rasmus Skovgaard Andersen2,Jens Skov Damgaard2, Dimitrios Chrysostomou2, Simon Bøgh2,Mikkel Rath Pedersen1, Bjarne Großmann1, Ole Madsen2, and Volker Kru¨ger11 Robotics, Vision and Machine Intelligence Lab,Aalborg University of CopenhagenAC Meyers Vaenge 15, DK-2450 Copenhagen2 Robotics & Automation Group,Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering,Fibigerstraede 16, DK-9220 Aalborg EastAbstract. During the last decades, the methods for intuitive task levelprogramming of robots have become a fundamental point of interest forindustrial application. The paper in hand presents SkiROS (Skill-basedRobot Operating System) a novel software architecture based on theskills paradigm. The skill paradigm has already been used and testedwithin the FP7 project TAPAS, and we are going to use it in severalnew FP7 projects (CARLOS, STAMINA, ACAT). It facilitates task-levelprogramming of mobile manipulators by providing the robot with a setof movement primitives, skills and tasks. This hierarchy brings manyadvantages, where the most relevant is the separation of control in thelayers of hardware abstraction(proxy), multi-sensory control(primitive),object-level abstraction (skill) and planning (task). The definition andthe clear division in different abstraction levels allows the implementationof a flexible, highly modular system for the development of cognitiverobot tasks.Keywords: Mobile manipulation, Software architecture, Task-level pro-gramming1 Project idea and objectivesThe task-level programming is a way of programming a robot on an abstract level.This promises to decrease the amount of competences necessary to deal withcomplex robots and it is a powerful way to speed up the programming process andthe code reuse. This is realized creating an abstraction which hide the complexityof the lower layers and allows to focus on the task itself. Task-level programmingspecifies what the robot should do in terms of actions on the objects involved inthe task and not necessarily to the full extent how it should be achieved.In earlier papers [1, 4] we defined tasks as a sequence of skills where the skillsprovide the atomic programming blocks that a) unify sensing and robot action for2interaction with the environment [4] and b) are motivated by human intuition [1].The skills are comparable to the manipulation primitive nets, described best in [2].These nets are sequences of manipulation primitives, with simple decisions basedon the outcome of each single manipulation primitive in the net. In these netseach manipulation primitive needs its own explicitly specified parameters, e.g. aspecic force or velocity in a specic direction. This , however, makes this particularimplementation unsuitable for robotics novices in a factory hall. Instead, ourskills propose a method for specifying only high-level parameters, while low-levelparameter for the lower level primitives are mostly inferred through reasoning.This also brings the skill names more close to human intuition, e.g., ”pick” and”place”.The research on tiered robotic architectures started in ’80 [3], and still nostandard exists. A major research effort to form a generalized robot middlewareis the Robotic Operating System (ROS) [6] where there are some projects in thesimilar direction as SkiROS. Two examples are moveIT [7] and ROSco [5]. Theformer is focused on industrial manipulators and embed some good tools, likecollision-detection, arm motion planning and execution, etc. ROSco is focusedon home environment robots, it is based on ”behaviors”, which are HierarchicalFinite State Machine (HFSM) composed of generic, parameterized buildingblocks. [5]SkiROS aims to create a system capable of extending the capabilities ofmoveIT with high level ones similar to those realized within ROSco. In thatsense, the final objective of SkiROS is to give us a flexible platform, integratingthe state of the art in the task-level programming. It will be used as a tool tomake research and aims to go beyond the state of the art in terms of robustness,sustainability and execution speed.The main structure of SkiROS is illustrated in Figure 1. It is divided into 4layers, each one with separate interfaces for specific usage and development. Thisstructure allows the development of key features and algorithms as independentDevice layer (Hardware abstraction / Low level control)Primitive layer (Multi-sensor control)Skill layer (Object-level abstraction)Task layer(Planning)Fig. 1. The proposed layers in SkiROS, with the related concerns. The Device Layerrealizes the hardware abstraction, the Primitive Layer merges the hardware controlwith sensors feedback. The Skill Layer realizes a concatenation of primitive deviceproperties, based only on semantic information. Finally, the Task Layer plans the skillsequence to achieve the final goal.3plugins in a modular way without interfering with the rest of the core system.Thus, the sharing, reuse and collaborative development of further plugins will bean straightforward task.2 ROS benefit for the projectSkiROS targets an ambitious goal which shares some of its main functionalitieswith ROS. In particular:– ROS interprocess communication structure (topics, services and actions), afundamental feature to modularize the system.– ROS pluginlib to easily insert new functionalities in the system layers mean-while decouple them from the system itself. Note that the use of pluginlibbind us, for now, to code entirely in C++.– ROS drivers to interact with sensors.– URDF/SRDF standard to describe the robot structure.– Rviz and Gazebo used to visualize and/or simulate robot environments.– ROS moveIT package offering many fundamental functionalities in the pick-place pipeline.– ROS-industrial package offers drivers for industrial arms and grippers.3 Contribution to ROS-IThe contribution of SkiROS to ROS-industrial is a trailblazing investigation of thefirst ROS architecture capable to allow easy and independent implementation/useof functionalities on different levels of abstraction, from hardware control tocomplex tasks. In particular it will:– Bring forward the hardware abstraction standard already started for arms,but not for other devices.– Investigate a primitive standard, where can be realized different constrainedand sensor-based control strategies and sensor data analysis.– Investigate skill standard to realize a reliable concatenation of primitivesusing semantic information.– Investigate a task-planning system.The system is going to extensively used and validated into real industrial envi-ronment in terms of robustness , sustainability and intuitiveness within at leastthree European projects, CARLOS, STAMINA and ACAT.4 Use casesSkiROS will target numerous use-cases in several projects. Some of them identifiedwithin the STAMINA project are presented below:4– Use-Case 1: De-palletizing, pick objects placed with a rough order in acontainer.– Use-Case 2: Bin-picking, pick objects randomly placed into a container.– Use-Case 3: Kitting, collecting the components into a joint kit.The use-cases require the robot to fetch the right parts from different typesstorage, pallets and containers, and place them into the kits. This should beaccompanied with a built-in quality check of the parts. This require skills suchas bin-picking, navigation, inspection and placing. Based on the use-case specsprovided the robot should be able to find out autonomously how it can solve thetask, ideally without the need of additional programming.STAMINA address the call ICT-2013.2.2 ”Robotics use cases & Accompanyingmeasures project” and it is a 3 years length project.5 Conclusion and future worksIn this paper we briefly presented our task-level programming paradigm, basedon skills. The skill based system has already been used and tested extensively inthe context of industrial settings of the EU FP7 Project TAPAS [4]. It was arobust system, which simplified the task planning of mobile manipulators andwhile its general performance can be considered adequate, there is plenty of roomfor improvements. As a consequence, we have now started developing a referenceimplementation under the name SkiROS, a robot software architecture tailoredfor the specific needs of industrial projects, which implements the skill paradigmwith a modular and flexible way. Its main characteristic is the realization ofcomplex robotic applications including multi-robot cooperation and integrationof sensors in a plethora of robot operations. It will allow to develop, compile,share and use code easier, on every layer of abstraction.References1. Simon Bø gh, Oluf Skov Nielsen, Mikkel Rath Pedersen, Volker Kru¨ger, and Ole.Madsen. Does your robot have skills? The 43rd Intl. Symp, 2012.2. Bernd Finkemeyer, Torsten Kro¨ger, and Friedrich M. Wahl. Executing assemblytasks specified by manipulation primitive nets. Advanced Robotics, 19(5):591–611,January 2005.3. David Kortenkamp and Reid Simmons. Robotic systems architectures and pro-gramming. In Bruno Siciliano and Oussama Khatib, editors, Springer Handbook ofRobotics, pages 187–206. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008.4. Ole Madsen, Simon Bø gh, Casper Schou, Rasmus Skovgaard Andersen, Jens SkovDamgaard, Mikkel Rath Pedersen, and Volker Kru¨ger. Integration of two autonomousmobile manipulators in a real - world industrial setting. 2013.5. Georgia Institute of Technology. Ros commander (rosco): Behavior creation for homerobots, [Online]. https://www.hsi.gatech.edu/hrl/project rosco.shtml.6. Morgan Quigley, Ken Conley, Brian P. Gerkey, Josh Faust, Tully Foote, JeremyLeibs, Rob Wheeler, and Andrew Y. Ng. Ros: an open-source robot operating system.In ICRA Workshop on Open Source Software, 2009.7. Ioan A. Sucan and Sachin Chitta. Moveit! [available] http://moveit.ros.org, 2013.

SkiROS:A four tiered architecture for task-level programming of industrial mobile manipulators

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SkiROS:A four tiered architecture for task-level programming of industrial mobile manipulators

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